College Democrats | University of Wisconsin - Madison

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Russ Feingold
Here's a question for all you smarties out there - in a state that has such razor thing electoral margins in every election, how does Russ Feingold manage to pull off the comparatively huge margins that he does?
posted by Adam Lang at 12:29 PM

1 Comments:

Blogger Ryan Greenfield said...

I'm not sure why you would consider 6% and 2% HUGE margins (in the 1992 and 1998 elections respectively, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russ_Feingold).
And yes, he won by 12% in 2004 but let's be honest, Tim Michels was a total douchebag.

But if you meant how can such a liberal guy win in such a tight swing state, I think it has to do with the whole "I'm an honest guy and you know where I stand even if you disagree with me sometimes" idea that's so important in American politics and the sense that he really keeps in touch with his constituents (he holds how many listening sessions every year!?). It was the same dynamic in Minnesota with Senator Wellstone until he died in 2002. It just goes to show that the conventional wisdom is wrong, you can be elected without playing to the center. As a whole, Americans have never been issue-oriented voters. They may have disagreed with Bush on almost every issue but they sure knew they couldn't stand that flip-flopper John Kerry.

Sure, Feingold is out of touch with the state ideologically, but the electorate has a sense that he at least cares what they think, and he's not your typical unprincipled, soulless politician, so they keep voting for him.

June 23, 2007 4:33 PM  

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